Document Formatting Changes with Different User (2000)

Topic

New Reply

I am looking into a problem where some users open up a Word document only to have the document screwed up – it’s like the margin defaults in the user’s version of Word override the margins originally set in the original version of the document. I’m not sure if this is due to margin defaults, different versions of Word, styles, or what. I use to see this more often in the early days of Word, but never knew what caused it. They are thinking if they use Protect Document — Forms, the document would be locked and the document would be seen as it was created.

I don’t have a lot of information on this problem. I’m just trying to find out if protecting the document is feasible, and maybe get an idea of what causes the document to mess up. Thanks for any help you can provide.
Lisa B

Reply | Quote

Replies

I like to blame printer drivers for this sort of thing. We used to see something like that in this office before we all got the same type of printer.

Reply | Quote

I like to blame printer drivers for this sort of thing. We used to see something like that in this office before we all got the same type of printer.

Reply | Quote

Protecting a document for forms disables access to the Page Setup dialog. In theory that means that the margins should not be able to be changed, but Word might reserve some powers to itself even though the document is protected.

Reply | Quote

Protecting a document for forms disables access to the Page Setup dialog. In theory that means that the margins should not be able to be changed, but Word might reserve some powers to itself even though the document is protected.

Reply | Quote

You could check out Tools | Options | Compatibility. In the list there’s an option to use “printer metrics” or not. If ticked, Word reformats the document according to the values of the current printer. If unticked, Word displays the doc as is. Especially when a doc is created with a laser printer as current printer and then opened by someone with an inkjet printer, it can lead to different margins, espcially the bottom margin.
We “print” a lot of Word docs to a PDF converter. Leaving this option ticked, the PDF was not always an exact copy of the Word doc. So we programatically uncheck it for all docs (code in an gloabal template).

Reply | Quote

You could check out Tools | Options | Compatibility. In the list there’s an option to use “printer metrics” or not. If ticked, Word reformats the document according to the values of the current printer. If unticked, Word displays the doc as is. Especially when a doc is created with a laser printer as current printer and then opened by someone with an inkjet printer, it can lead to different margins, espcially the bottom margin.
We “print” a lot of Word docs to a PDF converter. Leaving this option ticked, the PDF was not always an exact copy of the Word doc. So we programatically uncheck it for all docs (code in an gloabal template).

Reply | Quote

I don’t know if you ever solved this. You could also check out whether there are any add-ins that affect the margin settings. See post 197827 for more information.

Reply | Quote

I don’t know if you ever solved this. You could also check out whether there are any add-ins that affect the margin settings. See post 197827 for more information.

Reply | Quote

Thank you all for your help. The print driver information makes quite a bit of sense. And I’m happy to report that locking the document as a form has kept it in tacked. I will also be checking my Tools – Options for that checkbox.
Lisa B.

Reply | Quote

Hi Lisa:
Another thing you might check is that Tools/Templates & add-ins…/Automatically update document styles is UNchecked. Although this shouldn’t actually change the margins, if someone has defined a style with strange indents & outdents, the margin could appear to change.

Reply | Quote

Thanks, Phil. I’ll check for that too. It’s so great to be able to get some answers to things that make no logical sense.
Lisa

Reply | Quote

Thanks, Phil. I’ll check for that too. It’s so great to be able to get some answers to things that make no logical sense.
Lisa

Reply | Quote

Hi Lisa:
Another thing you might check is that Tools/Templates & add-ins…/Automatically update document styles is UNchecked. Although this shouldn’t actually change the margins, if someone has defined a style with strange indents & outdents, the margin could appear to change.

Reply | Quote

Thank you all for your help. The print driver information makes quite a bit of sense. And I’m happy to report that locking the document as a form has kept it in tacked. I will also be checking my Tools – Options for that checkbox.
Lisa B.

Reply | Quote